Some people might have the mentality that one should start a business or become an entrepreneur after they finish school and graduate so that they can focus all their time and energy on that. Although I can see their point, they are wrong. The best time to start a business is WHILE you are in school before you graduate. Here is why…

1. What do you have to lose? As a college student, you relatively don’t have a lot, therefore you can risk almost everything and if you fail you really haven't lost a lot! That might sound harsh, but it’s true. If your venture fails you will only fall back to being a poor college student like everyone else. You might as well take the risk now while you don’t have more to lose after you graduate!
2. Free mentoring: Professors love nothing more than when they can help students succeed, after all that’s why they decided to start teaching in the first place. Within a college, there are professionals in any subject you could need help with. If you are a student trying to build an app, find a computer science professor to help you with building it, an accounting teacher to help you with your finances, and a business teacher to help you market it to the world. There is no other point in your life were you will have so much free access to people with so much knowledge.
3. *Unlimited resources: Many schools already have programs in place to help student entrepreneurs succeed. UVU has put in place the Entrepreneurship Institute for that very reason. The EI offers students opportunities to work one on one with experienced entrepreneurs, participate in competitions to validate ideas, and offer students seed funding. Most, if not all, of these resources are free to all students, once you graduate the same resources will no longer be free, in fact they might be pretty pricey. Take the free help before it’s too late!
4. A captive audience: Not only are you surrounded by a bubble of resources and people willing to help you, you are also surrounded by hundreds of potential customers. Putting up a flyer or booth in the hall where you know hundreds of students will walk by is a rarity that not many other businesses can come across.
5. Engaged learning experiences: College is obviously a place of learning, but there is an added measure of education acquired when you are actually applying what you learn in real-life situations. What better why to understand finance when you need to manage the finances of your growing business? You might just pay closer attention in class and learn a bit more.
6. Business partners: Similarly to being able to find mentors in many different fields while in college, you are very likely to find other students willing to partner with you with a skill set you lack. Most successful student-started businesses are not started by a single student, but a team of students. College is a prime location to build your dream team of entrepreneurs.
7. Resume building: After all is said and done, whether your venture succeeded or failed, being able to put that on a resume is extremely powerful. Hiring managers understand that running a business is no easy feat, and if you were able to do it and go to school at the same time, that sets you way above the rest.

If this doesn’t convince you to start building your startup now, I don't know what will. Learn more about entrepreneurship at UVU here.